The CFL’s Tim Tebow effect: Tickets over talent?

This past week, the New England Patriots released Tim Tebow. Perhaps in the process, sealing his fate and accelerating his exile into football purgatory.

For those unfamiliar with that biblical reference, purgatory is also known as limbo. An appropriate reference given our fallen hero's outwardly professed faith and the perfect word to describe the delicate career predicament Tebow now finds himself in. It's also that uneasy place between heaven and hell where a decision about where you'll end up is left to a higher power. Who knew the Christian afterlife would have so many similarities with professional football?

For a recently released, aspiring NFL football player, limbo has another name – it's called the CFL. An unfair stigma perpetuated by a long history of NFL reclamation projects not all with happy endings like Moon, Flutie and Wake.

But if the release of Tebow and the subsequent media stories about his potential arrival in Canada have shown us anything, it has highlighted the divide between football fans who continue to make unfair comparisons about the two leagues and those that embrace the CFL for what it is and isn't.

The late great sports writer Jim "Shaky" Hunt once described Canadian football this way: "The CFL is a lot like pornography... Everyone watches it, but no one will admit to it." It is that insecurity that has become our league’s greatest crutch.

Advocating for our league, and the quality of football players within it, is a complicated affair. For some reporters, writing about the CFL represents an exercise in legitimizing our brand of football to a handful of fans enthralled with an NFL logo. Like a bad case of 'survivors guilt', some media continue to apologize for our Canadian game. And they do so by creating premature storylines about high profile players like Tebow and their ability to somehow save and re-energize this 100 year old league.

Montreal Alouettes general manager and now interim head coach Jim Popp has been emphatic in his comments. "There has been no conversation with Tebow or his representation what so ever." And why should there be? When your popularity and public approval rating is more than double your QB rating, those in the know have a word for that alarming statistic. Gimmick. One that might sell tickets, but does little to win football games.

Popp gets it, the media, not so much. But complicity in the creation of a decades-old stigma is a hard thing to prove. Especially when any media headline about the CFL isn't necessarily a bad thing. Taking the novelty out of it, having a Heisman Trophy winner on your roster – and in Montreal's case the possibility of two if Tebow joins Troy Smith – would certainly create football headlines. It is not however, a recipe for success.

In my opinion Tebow is not suited for the CFL. But if he works on his accuracy, his ability to read complicated defences, becomes a more polished passer – physical gifts all great professional QB's posses – I'm sure a team might be willing to give the 26 year old a chance.

The privilege would be his of course, not ours if he was accepted into the CFL community. And if that is his choice, despite a devout following and an apparent belief that Tebow can somehow walk on football water, this sport is still a business. And from that perspective, better to reside in CFL purgatory than NFL hell.

Sandy Annunziata is a two-time Grey Cup champion who battled in the trenches along CFL offensive-lines for 11 seasons. Hard hitting and thought provoking, he takes you beyond the field and inside the locker room as he delivers a candid view of the game, the health of the league, the business of sport and the sometimes fragile psyche of pro athletes.